Children Use Duct Tape
by Ambiguous Avocado
Summary: A different take on the exchange atop Mt. Pyre between the player and two organization leaders. One-shot.


**Children Use Duct Tape**

I walk up the steps of Mt. Pyre, the fog hugging me and disengaging my senses. The atmosphere feels clod this high up, but I don't mind. The elusive Chimecho preoccupies my thoughts. When I reach the small patch of grass the Pokemon inhabits, I look up and see the elderly couple who guard the two orbs. Two other people stand with them, and I ascend the other set of steps to get a closer look.

"Thank you," I hear the woman say to one of the figures.

I gasp when I realize who I looked at. The figures are those of Maxie and Archie, the two team leaders who, only days earlier, unleashed the wrath of two legendary super-ancient Pokemon upon the world.

When they notice my presence, the two of them turn.

"Hello," Maxie says, and I look between them. My eyes settle upon the white fixture that held the two orbs, and I find them securely in place as if they had never left.

"You…put them back," I say bemusedly.

"What else could we do with them?" Archie says. "Kyogre and Groudon are gone, asleep in their respective homes."

'You could have tried again,' I want to say, but I think it best to keep the words to myself. It wouldn't do to encourage them.

"So that's it?" I ask. "You're done?"

Archie looks askance so Maxie answers for him. "Yes."

"With everything?"

"Of course."

And somehow, I believe him. Not that I can trust these two, but after everything that had happened, I don't see them trying anything else.

But are they really so willing to let everything they've built crumble?

That I can't believe.

"When I say everything, I mean the whole criminal organization deal, too. Not just the 'controlling two legendary Pokemon' gig."

"We mean everything," Archie replies sternly. "There's nothing left for us to do."

Maybe everything they've built has already crumbled, the people who supported them running away. I couldn't know. It would explain as to why they're letting their empire fall through their fingers like sand.

"But you've worked so hard toward this goal," I say. "You're giving up now?"

"You're too young to understand this," Maxie says," but as you get older, you learn some things aren't worth holding on to.

I want to state the irony, yell at them for taking me as only a child. Lecturing me about how age makes you wiser, when they only recently figured this out while I knew it all along.

"Do you at least acknowledge what you were doing was wrong?" I ask.

"There is no right or wrong," Archie says in that firm way, like he knows what he's talking about. "There's only what you think is right or wrong."

"And trying to destroy the world is _what _to you?" I say. "Because to me, it seems rather wrong."

"Our goals weren't to destroy the world," Maxie says. "They were to help it."

"Maybe you can't see what's wrong in your expanding-mass goals, but everyone else sure does. The world is fine as it is. Land Pokemon and sea Pokemon are perfectly content with each other. Why screw that up?"

"The world isn't fine as it is," Maxie says. "Nothing is."

"And you thought you had the power to change it?"

"We thought we could gain the power to change it," Archie says.

We stand there, and the elderly couple look at us inquisitively.

I know this will go nowhere so I say," All right, I get it. You had good intentions. You wanted to help Pokemon. But everything else was completely moronic."

"You can think that way," Maxie says. "I can't change your mind."

The two walk away without another word but a second later, Maxie walks back up to me. He seems to change his mind, though, and leaves. I turn to the elderly woman.

"I don't think they are bad people," she says simply, staring at the orbs.

I wonder what they will do now. What will they do for a living? Where will they go?

Perhaps they still hold onto their goals like obstinate children, refusing to believe something isn't true. They say I'm a child, too young to understand, but I understand hypocrisy and idiocy, the difference between what is done and what is said. I understand things they have yet to recognize.

Still, they are the adults. The right ones, the older ones. I'm just a stupid kid trying to fix everything with duct tape and scissors, an impermanent solution easily ripped apart.

I only gain refuge in the fact that I stopped them. They failed because of me, a meddling child with nothing better to do than to interfere with criminals. It doesn't seem possible that I stopped them forever, restraining them with that duct tape of mine.

But they're adults and they'll learn like all children do.

_They can't let this be _

**The End**

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**(a/n) A lot of this can be taken for the other games too, especially at the end. How the player always stops the criminal organization and everything is happy and dandy. **


End file.
